Echo Beach
by Gloaming Transcendence
Summary: Shira was not his first. In this story, we explore a love of Diego's past. DiegoxMOC.
1. Sunset

_New Story. Just got the idea for it now and have sketched out the first chapter! Might fix it up a bit later but for now, here it is._

_It is named after an 80's song by a band called Martha and the Muffins... just FYI._

_**Disclaimer:** I do not own any Ice Age characters; they belong to Blue Sky Studios._

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**Chapter 1: Sunset**

Perched on a high cliff and overlooking a valley, Diego and Shira sat together and enjoyed the summer breeze - a rare dose of warmth in an otherwise cold and icy world. After their adventures out at sea, the two settled down together and had began talking about their lives over the past few weeks in order to get to know each other a little better. Everything had happened so fast it was hard to comprehend, and although they had warmed quite strongly to one another, they didn't really have much of an idea of where they wanted their relationship to go from here, both still knowing very little about who their new found partner was and what they were really all about.

Diego smiled at the dimming sun as it came closer to the horizon. Night was to be falling soon and they would have to rejoin the herd at base camp. Shira however, concentrated her energies inward. There was something she needed to ask and was still building up the courage to do so. Suddenly, it was ready to come out of her.

"Uh, Diego..." She said rather awkwardly, forcing Diego to turn around and face her with his gentle, hazel green eyes.

"Yes Kitty?" Diego said quietly with a smirk that made Shira screw her face up in annoyance, in turn making Diego chuckle.

"I was just wondering... have you had any, other... like, you know?" Shira expressed herself with difficulty as Diego's playful appearance became increasingly puzzled and serious.

"You know what?" Diego replied in confusion.

"Like other girlfriends, lovers... ex-wives, that kinda thing?" Shira laughed awkwardly after speaking in order to keep the mood light and to prevent herself from coming across as overly jealous or protective.

Diego just thought for a moment before replying quite adamantly. "Nope, haven't had any other girlfriends. Just you. Certainly no ex-wives."

He spoke quickly as he stood up and walked away from the cliff in equal haste. Shira looked back upon him with an eyebrow raised in suspicion, but quickly exchanged it with a smile as Diego looked back to her once more.

"C'mon, we better go, the others will be waiting." He spoke, looking slightly more at ease again.

"I'll be there in a moment... Softie." Shira replied, so cheekishly she may as well have blown a raspberry with her tongue as she said it.

"Whatever..." Diego rolled his eyes and said sarcastically before running off back to the herd, leaving Shira on her lonesome.

She let out a slight chuckle under her breath as she watched him run off, then turned to face the sun once more as it journeyed ever closer to the horizon.

"I wonder if he would hide something like that from me..." She thought to herself curiously for a few moments before getting up off the cliff and walking graciously back to base camp with Diego and the rest of her new found friends.

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_R&R and make suggestions as you wish! As of now this is only a draft but I like where I'm headed. Will hopefully update soon enough but I'll go faster with interest from others (always motivating)._

_Happy reading!_


	2. Nightfall

_Thankyou to jeremhy, Icey K and Shiego623 for your reviews and thankyou to the followers and fans as well! Here is the second chapter. This story is starting out a bit like 'Beyond Me' (a fic I abandoned awhile back, didn't know where I was going with it quite frankly!) but I think this one will be a little more refined. More R&R welcome as always!_

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**Chapter 2: Nightfall**

Night had fallen by the time Diego returned to camp. He was greeted by a lonely fire which had nearly blown itself out, the other animals of the herd having found rest within a nearby cave. The fire was still warm for the time being so Diego sat near it and began fall asleep.

Not for long though, as his slumber was soon interrupted by the pit-pat of four ticked-off feet and a rather harsh blowing out of the fire's final flames. Shira growled and kicked her sleeping lover.

"You know, it would be nice if once in a while you could just WAIT for me to catch up to you!" Shira barked angrily.

"Eh... heh, what?" Replied Diego groggily at the seething grey furball before him. She kicked him again.

"Ow, that hurt!" Diego moaned sleepily.

"When I asked that question before I don't know what I was thinking, if you ever had another partner in your life you'd know to treat them better. You're just _clueless_, completely and utterly _clueless_!" Shira ranted on aggressively before thrusting Diego to the side with her body as she lay down to sleep next to him.

"Goodnight honey..." Diego said with a yawn before closing his eyes once more.

"Goodnight." Shira replied sharply before closing her eyes and dissapating the last of her rage so she could get to rest also, before the two tigers were interrupted by a familiar husky, nasaled voice coming from inside the cave.

"Hey, you two keep it down out there! The rest of us are trying to get some sleep!" Whined Manny, the rather tired wooly mammoth.

"You just stay out of it okay, poofy boy?" Shira yelled back to him with no time for any further nonsense.

"I'm _not_ poofy, I'm just fa... wait a minute, HEY!" Manny retorted clumsily, causing Ellie to stir.

"Manny..." She warned groggily.

"Sorry sweetie." Manny said back to her softly before returning to silence.

Diego giggled in his sleep in light of the unfolding commotion. Shira, still mad with him, just jabbed him with her elbow and got back into a resting position.

"Just get to sleep okay..." She hissed annoyedly, rolling her eyes and shutting them again.

Not a further word was said between the quarrelling members of the herd that night and so everyone was finally able to get a much needed shut-eye. Diego might have thought to accompany Shira on her way back to the herd but he had been distracted at the time by something else, something that was still plaguing his thoughts after she had asked him that question about past relationships. He didn't fall into a deep sleep so easy this time around having been interrupted just before and so he remained in the void between sleep and awake. His thoughts brewed within this dark space of mind, they took him back to his past. The setting sun he saw today had been a reminder of how things used to be a long time ago, before the herd - even before he was sent off to join Soto and his pack. These memories stemmed back to Diego's adolescent years, when watching the sun go down, was just a habit of his...


	3. The Early Days

_Thanks for the continued reviews and interest! Here is the next chapter, where Diego begins to dream about his past, and we meet some OC's!_

_**Note:** To clear up any future confusion, ages of animals in this story will be measured in human years._

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**Chapter 3: The Early Days**

Diego could still vividly recall the time when he was only 12 years of age. He used to spend his days at the beach with three other cubs while his parents and theirs went out to hunt together. They were the first pack and family that he had ever known.

That night he would re-envision in his mind the environment they used to live in along the coast. It was a strange place, one where ancient astronauts and time travellers were rumoured to spend a lot of time investigating the local surroundings. And if you were there with them at the time, it would have been hard not to believe such a story, wild as it may have been.

The place was literally scattered with unexplainable debris, often containing strange metallic materials and bright colours, mysterious inventions with peculiar and amazing functions that could not be replicated anywhere else. There were things that were literally incomprehensible among these parts, no-one could decipher them, nor the strange encyptions listed on the pale wafer sheets they often came with. Were they instructions for the workings of these contraptions? At times it seemed so, but it was difficult to know for sure.

Then there was the sky. Every night it was lit with shooting stars of neon, except they didn't fall to the Earth like regular shooting stars did. The neon lights would dart across the sky intelligently, as if there was a sentient mind guiding each and every one of them. The evenings were coated in them like the auroras further toward the north, except these lights were renowned for their existence in just one location, the one where Diego had spent his childhood. A place known as Echo Beach.

Being a child with a pleasant and innocent start to life, Diego was generally a happy and fun-loving cub. He would play in the shallow waters by the ocean with his cousin and two other females in his pack that were around the same age as him.

His cousin, Oscar, was someone he would come into contact with once more when he joined Soto's pack. At this time though, they were best friends, Oscar being only a few months older than Diego, having recently turned 13 in the days before Diego left Echo Beach. The two female cubs, Mandylion and Daphne, were 15 and 11 at this time, respectively. Mandylion was the appointed carer of the three younger cubs while the adult sabers within the pack went out hunting. She had blue-green eyes, deep orange fur and a gentle heart, but unfortunately, she wasn't the most careful tiger around and had lots of close calls with the other cubs while the elders weren't around.

Daphne, the youngest saber and Mandylion's sole sister, had pale tan fur, baby blue eyes, and most of all, a deeply imaginative personality which she had no problem expressing with her older sister and two friends. She occasionally drove Diego nuts with her rambling but he got used to her after awhile and developed a softness towards animals with more scatterbrained, fantasy-prone personalities. A particular sloth he would befriend later on reminded him a bit of Daphne, which is just as well for Sid as he'd probably be eaten by now if that wasn't the case...

One thing that Diego always remembered was that when nightfall would soon occur, Mandylion used to gather everyone up on the shore together and they'd watch the sunset occur as they waited for their parents and dinner. The sunsets at Echo Beach were spectacularly crimson and so whenever Diego saw a beautiful red sunset, his mind would always go back to his childhood with Oscar, Mandylion and Daphne, a time which ended abruptly the day before he turned 13.


End file.
